Claus Witt

I haven’t tried it (yet), and it’s probably not something that a lot of people would find that interesting/useful. But I just found an open source ASP 2 PHP compiler, which will take any asp page (written in vbscript) and create a corresponding php page. Sounds fun. If only I had some of my asp based projects from 2001/2002 lying around somewhere… But that would require me to go back in time, and tell my self to make backups.

For a long time I have thought about several application/service ideas which needs TV listings data in some parseable dataformat (xml format comes to mind). But for some reason there is no free ressource to get these data, not even from the websites of the channels in question. I have found some listings of UK tv – but since I live in Denmark I would at least like the 8 or 9 danish channels to be included as well.

I have found a provider that allows me to get a personal feed for 89,- DKR pr year, which off course sounds cheap, but their terms says that you cannot redistribute the data. They also sell licenses to the data, but I suspect that this would be an expensive option, and my ideas will not be something that could make a lot of money, I think.

It seems weird to me that the data is not freely available. In my opinion it should be in the interest of the danish media providers (DR, TV2, Viasat, TVDanmark) to make it available, since it can help promote their programs, and thus make money on advertising on their tv-channels. Or maybe I have missed something in the equation??

For a while I have been pondering wether or not I should try to conquer the evergrowing flash-game-market. There are several ways to make money this way, and a lot of the games out there are quite simple. Some of the ways to make money on online games include sponsoring, in-game-ads and micropayments. The first two are probably the most widespread, since it does not need to be an advanved game to gain an income in either of these two categories – only a gameplay which ensures that the game will be played/viewed a lot of times. And with what I have seen, sometimes it is the stupidest games that get the most plays.

For micropayments to work however, I guess one would have to actually create a game which is so enticing that the players will return again and again, and will want to spend money to get an advantage, extra levels, other characters or other things which could be sold seperatly. I have found a list of ten ideas of microtransactions in games. There are some good advice there, I must admit. I will ad one of my own here:

Create a game with a montly highscore list – the winner each month will win the ultimate prize (and if you could get this sponsored from somewhere… Even better). You will then let all players buy all the advantages they want… Beware however, I don’t know if this is legal or not – I suspect that it is not ok in Denmark, where I live.